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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How far has the "theoretical revolution" spread according to Eagleton?
(a) To the outer circle of critics and readers.
(b) Within the inner circle of critics and readers.
(c) Far beyond the circle of specialists and enthusiasts.
(d) Not beyond the circle of specialists and enthusiasts.

2. Both F.R. Leavis and Edmund Husserl seek to grasp the thing in itself, or the ______for Husserl and ______for Leavis.
(a) Image; eidos.
(b) Idea; life.
(c) Idea; essence.
(d) Eidos; life.

3. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?
(a) Inventiveness.
(b) Realism.
(c) Criticism.
(d) Literariness.

4. According to Eagleton, "theory was a way of _______ literary works from the ________of civilised sensibility'"
(a) Emancipating; stranglehold.
(b) Excluding; oppression.
(c) Dismissing; idea.
(d) Studying; truth.

5. According to Eagleton, why is E.D. Hirsch able to maintain his view that literary meaning is absolute and resistant to historical change?
(a) Because meaning is viewed as pre-arranged.
(b) Because meaning is viewed as pre-historic.
(c) Because meaning is viewed as pre-modern.
(d) Because meaning is viewed as pre-linguistic.

6. According to Eagleton, who "harnessed this Romantic humanism to the cause of the working class" in the late nineteenth-century?
(a) Percy Shelley.
(b) William Morris.
(c) Lord Byron.
(d) Samuel Coleridge.

7. According to Eagleton, what happens when literary theory becomes "turgidly unreadable"?
(a) "It is being true to the importance of its form."
(b) "It is being untrue to its historical roots."
(c) "It is being untrue to the importance of its form."
(d) "It is being true to its historical roots."

8. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."
(a) "Laboratory; boudoir."
(b) "Philosophy; laboratory."
(c) "Boudoir; system."
(d) "Boudoir; laboratory."

9. For Eagleton, hostility toward theory means what?
(a) Opposition to other people's theories.
(b) Acceptance to some people's theories.
(c) Opposition to other people's theories and oblivion of one's own.
(d) Acceptance to some people's theories and protective of one's own.

10. What "twin impacts" does Eagleton cite in the mid-Victorian period that was particularly worrisome to the ruling class?
(a) Religious ideology and social change.
(b) Religious ideology and social statis.
(c) Scientific discovery and religious ideology.
(d) Scientific discovery and social change.

11. What genre of writing does Eagleton provide that is an example of writing that is NOT considered to be literature?
(a) Young Adult.
(b) Science fiction.
(c) Comics.
(d) Romance.

12. The distinction between fact and fiction in defining literature is what?
(a) Difficult.
(b) Complicated.
(c) Questionable.
(d) Important.

13. According to Eagleton, what kind of thought does literary education NOT encourage?
(a) Creative thought.
(b) Analytical thought.
(c) Irrational thought.
(d) Rational thought.

14. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?
(a) To the reader.
(b) To the text.
(c) To the author.
(d) To the critic.

15. Eagleton argues that the criteria for what counted as literature in the eighteenth-century was what?
(a) Ideological.
(b) Practical.
(c) Religious.
(d) Canonical.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, formalism is the application of what to the study of literature?

2. Who developed hermeneutics?

3. Who is the key figure in the Victorian period Eagleton cites as "preternaturally aware of the needs of his social class"?

4. What three sequential stages does Eagleton point out in the development of modern literary theory?

5. For E.D. Hirsch, the aim of "policing" an author's meaning is to what, according to Eagleton?

(see the answer keys)

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